£4.5 million available for rail crossover projects

The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) Innovation Directorate have launched a £4.5 million co-funded competition to support vehicle based innovations which make technical improvements to rail vehicles.

The competition is open to all, including cross over technology from other sectors including a focus on automotive. If you have a technology that can:

• Reduce costs associated with track damage – by reducing track wear induced by vehicles this would lead to significant reductions in maintenance costs.
• Reduced wheelset & suspension maintenance costs – by reducing wheel and suspension wear this would provide significant reductions in maintenance costs.

Then you make sure you are at the Vehicle Dynamics Competition briefing event in London on 24 March at 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE, to find out more.

Proposals should be for demonstrator projects with the aim of progressing technologies from TRL3+ through to TRL 7. It is anticipated that all proposals will be business led and consortia are strongly encouraged to address these issues. Business will attract up to a maximum of 70% public funding depending on the nature of the project and the type of business, universities and research organisations are eligible to apply as part of consortia.

It is anticipated that three to eight proposals will be accepted depending on the funding requested.

The competition will be launched on 25 February, and be open for submissions until 2 June (5:00pm).